


you must be the call

by carnation



Category: Gintama
Genre: Established Relationship, Obedience, Other, Victory Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-06 11:50:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8749639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carnation/pseuds/carnation
Summary: It’s hardly as though she’s unaware that Kyuubei has a tendency to treat her every word like it’s the inspirational gospel of an infallible god – she knows it, and she’s always known it, and the fact Tae knows it is precisely why, with Kyuubei, she always tries so hard to curb her usual urge to take command: it wouldn’t be fair. There’s nothing kind about giving orders to someone who’s fundamentally incapable of refusing them.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Femslash Porn Battle, for the prompt/s: 'Shimura Tae/Yagyuu Kyuubei, fire, protection, power'. (Though I've tagged 'Other' because despite the femslash fest, I don't actually think of this as a femslash ship - it's just that the prompts were there, and so was I.) 
> 
> Title taken from 'Spellwork', by Austra.

The kidnapping attempt grows tiresome around late morning, by which time Tae has concluded that anyone who was planning to come rushing to her rescue has already missed the timeslot within which it would have been touching and heartwarming, and has now entered the timeslot in which it would just be embarrassing for everyone concerned: lazily apathetic, a belated token effort. It’s also coming up to lunchtime, and based on the mid-morning snack that was tossed into the back of the van while they were still trundling along unseen bumpy roads to their dilapidated hideout, their kidnappers’ catering is likely to leave much to be desired.

“I really thought someone would come and rescue me,” Tae laments, in the damp gloom of their current windowless holding room. “Not Gin-san, I know he wouldn’t be awake at this time of the morning – but Shin-chan, perhaps, or Kagura-chan... I really did think they’d make an effort.”

“Maybe they haven’t noticed you’ve been kidnapped yet,” suggests Kyuubei, who’s been pacing restless, vigilant laps of the tiny room ever since the two of them were ushered into it. She reaches the wall again; she executes a sharp pivot and turns to retrace her steps. “Maybe they think you’ve already rescued yourself.”

“And if they thought I’d already rescued myself, then they wouldn’t have to get up off the couch to do it for me, would they?” says Tae, and she sighs a tragic, self-pitying sigh. “So you’re probably right, Kyuu-chan. Maybe I should’ve tried to get us kidnapped in the late afternoon instead; that way they’d have _no_ excuse...”

Again, Kyuubei reaches the wall; again, she pivots back. The kidnapping would have ended before it ever began – brutally curtailed the very moment they were ambushed in an alleyway off the morning market – if Tae hadn’t caught Kyuubei’s hand before it reached her sword and quickly pulled her close enough to whisper, slyly coaxing, that perhaps they _ought_ to let it happen – that, actually, Tae would rather like to play along; that it would certainly be a novel way to spend a morning.

If Kyuubei had had her way, their would-be kidnappers would have been incapacitated and decapitated the instant they’d dared to treat Tae as an eligible victim of crime. It’s the kidnappers’ fault they decided to target Tae and Kyuubei – but it’s Tae’s fault they succeeded.

“I just wanted to know who’d come rushing to my rescue, that’s all,” says Tae. She spreads her hands in resignation. “You wouldn’t think that was so much to ask for, would you? I just wanted to know who didn’t deserve to be on my list for New Year’s cards anymore.”

“I could rescue you,” says Kyuubei. She halts her pacing and looks seriously down at Tae. “I could rescue both of us, Tae-chan.”

“I know you could,” says Tae fondly. “What about if you rescue me, and I rescue you, and then we steal their van and drive back into town and forget all of this ever happened? Honestly, Kyuu-chan, if I’d known getting kidnapped would be this boring, I’d have packed us a picnic and some board games.”

Kyuubei’s expression brightens at once. She offers her hand; Tae takes it, and lets her pull her to her feet.

The door of their prison is heavy and dark, reinforced with a Z of steel slashed through the wood from top to bottom. Tae kicks it down and opens hostilities, and the rescue commences.

The rest of the hideout is as dark and gloomy as its basement. They split up outside the wreckage of the door; Kyuubei races left, into the shadowy desolate utility rooms, while Tae goes for the big, echoing warehouse room where a miserable handful of would-be kidnappers are sitting huddled around a portable heater, arguing in furious mutters about the fact that they need to place a ransom call and yet none of their phones can get reception so far outside the city. She deals with them; she kicks the evidence of having dealt with them tidily to the side of the room; she clambers over the dusty carcasses of shipping crates stacked at the end of the long hall, and she goes after the stragglers who thought they’d fled the scene without her noticing.

It had been a bitterly cold morning in the market before the kidnapping happened, and then the back of the van with its tarpaulin walls had been cold too; the basement had been chilly, but at least there she’d had the warmth of Kyuubei, and the warmth of Kyuubei’s blazing indignation that any men would dare to believe themselves entitled to even _consider_ attempting to kidnap Tae – she had found it far more difficult to let herself let Tae get kidnapped than to let herself get kidnapped on Tae’s request. But even though the warehouse is old and draughty and full of gapped walls where planks have slipped loose, and mouldy spots on the stone floors where chunks of the roof have given way and let the rain in over years, Tae’s forgotten all about the cold. The chase, the attack, the fight, the victory: she punches a man straight through a boarded-over window and her blood is raging hot inside her.

“I _knew_ getting kidnapped was a good idea,” she bursts out, the moment she whirls around and sees Kyuubei running back to her, “I knew it, Kyuu-chan! I knew there’d be another silver lining _somewhere_ , if we waited—”

She grabs Kyuubei by the shoulders the moment she’s in reach and kisses her, with a burning single-minded focus; Kyuubei breaks away for just long enough to hurriedly sheathe her sword, and then she seizes Tae’s waist and pulls her nearer. The adrenalin’s like accelerant poured onto a fire, and it feeds on itself in a cycle that grows and grows: beneath her hand Tae feels Kyuubei’s heart as fast as her own, feels her stumbling in her haste when Tae backs them both ungracefully through another decrepit swinging door, and her urgency feeds Tae’s own, which in return feeds Kyuubei’s, and the feverish feedback loop whirls on.

Through the swinging door, and they’re in the entrance room: its walls once white, but peeling; its ceiling lower than the rest of the hideout. A few chairs lie tipped over in one corner, their legs sticking out at aimless angles. The double doors are panelled with frosted glass that a triple attack from time, weather, and neglect have turned opaque. Outside are only the woods, and the frosty morning; inside, Tae backs against the nearest mouldy wall, and doesn’t pull Kyuubei after her because Kyuubei’s already right there with her, pushing aside Tae’s kimono collar to kiss her there as well.

“They’re – unconscious, aren’t they,” Tae gets out, in a voice less reliably solid than usual. “All of them? All very unconscious?”

“Extremely unconscious,” Kyuubei assures her, without lifting her head from Tae’s throat; the vibration of voice against skin shivers through her, and Tae presses her head back against the wall and breathes hard, trying to steady herself before she reaches down between them and fumbles, one-handed, with the constricting tightness of her obi – she can’t unknot it from this angle, but she can loosen it – she can coax the front folds of her kimono back, she can tug it a little way aside—

Kyuubei’s already there, as well, the moment she realises what Tae wants; she nudges Tae’s hand away and takes over, forging a path onwards through layer after layer, finding the places where cloth overlaps cloth and pushing all of it impatiently aside – until the only layer left is Tae’s cotton underwear; and Kyuubei pushes that aside as well and makes a small soft sound like what she’s found beneath is even better than what she’d thought she’d find, despite the fact that what she’s found is almost certainly exactly what she thought she’d find.

The warmth in Tae twists hotter still. Small careful fingers are pressing her open; she seizes in a breath and kisses Kyuubei until she no longer notices that she isn’t kissing Kyuubei, until all she’s doing is taking rapid breaths against her mouth, so close and so hot that it’s easily mistaken; the adrenalin and the tension and her feverish need are pitched into the same furnace, until she’s sure she won’t be able to stand it for much longer.

She tightens her grip on the back of Kyuubei’s neck and says, breathlessly, “Not – Kyuu-chan, not like this—”

“Not like—”

Tae finds her shoulder, and in an instant Kyuubei gets the message; Tae doesn’t even have to push before she’s on her knees, and after that Tae doesn’t have to do anything at all, except for winding Kyuubei’s dark ponytail through her hand and remembering she needs to breathe out as well as in, hearing the roughening sound of her own breath in the desolate building, the muted whistle of the wind, the damp, obscene sound of Kyuubei’s mouth.

Afterwards she slides her back down the wall until the chilly stone floor meets her, and then she closes her eyes; she catches her breath.

When she opens her eyes again, Kyuubei’s watching her, her expression oddly sombre for someone who’s also licking clean her hand with industrious attention to detail.

“It could be days before someone thinks to rescue us,” says Tae, whose blood is no longer singing with the fervour of a battlefield but is rather settling down, satiated; the war is won, the victory is hers. She rearranges herself so she’s sitting comfortably on the cold floor; she tugs Kyuubei forward until she’s off-balance, until she has to brace herself with a hand against the wall, straddling Tae’s lap. “It could be weeks, Kyuu-chan.”

“That’s fine,” says Kyuubei, and grabs her face and kisses her instead of joining in the game. Or perhaps this _is_ Kyuubei joining in the game; it’s unlikely she’d really mind, after all, if the two of them were to be cut off from society alone together for weeks on end. In her mouth is the sour taste that must be Tae’s own, and that thought catches at Tae like it always does, rekindling that low, insistent heat.

She slides her hands from Kyuubei’s narrow hips to her waist, and tugs at the sash fastened there. “Take—” _this off_ , she doesn’t say, because Kyuubei’s ahead of her, already yanking it undone. Her sword falls loose; it hits the stone with a clatter and rolls, ignored.

There are no complicated layers here – just the loose opening of her trousers, and the Y-front briefs beneath, the front opening of which tends to get considerably more use in reverse than the designer probably intended. Tae slips her hand inside; the fabric’s already saturated, and Kyuubei immediately buries her face in Tae’s hair, her breath already lost, pressing down against her like she can’t help it – and maybe she can’t.

Maybe she can, though.

Tae flattens her other hand against Kyuubei’s chest; then she changes her mind and makes a fist instead, wrapped tight into the V where her collar overlaps. “Don’t,” she says – to no effect; at her slightest movement Kyuubei’s already pushing hard against her, wanting more and then more, slick against her palm, “Kyuu-chan, listen – _don’t_ , I said—”

Kyuubei looks down at her in distracted confusion, like she’s having to translate what Tae’s said through several different languages before she can extract a meaning from it. Then she says, “Don’t what, Tae-chan?”

“Move,” says Tae, “don’t _move_ ,” and though the sound of her own impatience startles her, it doesn’t stop her; as long as Kyuubei’s not moving then it’s easier for Tae to move, and easier for her to do exactly what she wants, how she wants, when she wants. “Just – stay still,” she says distractedly, already diverting her attention back to where it was, “just let _me_...”

Kyuubei’s haze of confusion lifts, slowly, like dawn taking its time to rise – but then she turns a vivid shade of scarlet and presses her face into Tae’s hair again, from where Tae can hear even more clearly how harsh her breathing grows; and where Tae can feel, from the increasingly painful tightness with which Kyuubei’s gripping her shoulders, just how hard she’s trying not to let even the smallest, most involuntary movements past her guard.

So hard is she trying, in fact, that Tae very nearly fails to notice when she comes, so obediently still and so silently that the only clue that’s left for Tae to notice is how fiercely she’s holding her breath through it, and how suddenly all that held-in breath leaves her afterwards – though even then she doesn’t let herself relax, or mention it, or move, and the realisation that she’s still stubbornly sticking to Tae’s impatiently snapped command hits with a sudden, belated shock.

“Oh – _Kyuu-chan_ ,” and Tae disentangles herself in a hurry, pulling Kyuubei in to kiss her the way she should’ve been kissing her, “I didn’t mean,” as her words spill out jumbled, intermittent bursts against Kyuubei’s mouth, “not – I didn’t mean not to, to move _at all_ , you could’ve,” distracted every time she breaks off, with more effort needed every time to remember what her point had been to start with, “I mean, if you wanted you could’ve—”

“I didn’t,” says Kyuubei, and, “I like it,” says Kyuubei, and, “ _Tae-chan_ ,” she says, insistently—

Tae loses her point again; this time, it stays lost. At the thought of such difficult, unnecessary obedience for nothing but the sake of pleasing her she feels only a fluttering nervous tension, like looking out from the window of a skyscraper’s highest floor: there’s no risk, but there’s the feeling of risk, passing down her spine with a ghost-like shiver and leaving the hair at her nape prickling. If it didn’t feel that way, perhaps she’d care more about convincing Kyuubei that it _is_ unnecessary.

In the quiet the wind is whistling; the chill is beginning to return. When Kyuubei sits back it’s with a grimace of equal parts apology and distaste, and she pushes a hand down her trousers to adjust her underwear, drying sticky and uncomfortable by now.

Affection washes over Tae and leaves contentment in its wake. She doesn’t let Kyuubei remove herself from where she’s sitting, still straddling Tae’s lap; instead she loops her arms behind Kyuubei’s neck and keeps her there, listening to the wind, and its reedy complaints as it whistles through gapped walls and eroded ceilings, as she tries to work out what it is that she wants to say.

“Do you,” Tae begins at last, and stops. She tries to think of another way to phrase it, decides there _is_ no other way to phrase it, and steels herself to say, tentatively, “Do you... like doing what I tell you, Kyuu-chan?”

“I like doing what you want,” corrects Kyuubei, unembarrassed.

Tae tries to think of another way to phrase her next question, too. There still doesn’t seem to be one. “...Isn’t that the same thing, Kyuu-chan?”

Kyuubei shakes her head. Then: “No,” she says, for good measure. Her expression is grave, as though Tae’s stumbled into a common yet regrettable misunderstanding, as though this is a question Kyuubei ends up fielding all the time. Tae pushes back damp dark hair from her face, careful to avoid the elastic of her eyepatch, and waits, patiently, for Kyuubei to take her silence as an invitation to elaborate. “I... want you to get what you want, Tae-chan.”

“Well – me too,” says Tae, with affable curiosity; she’s never seen any point in hiding her ambition, least of all from Kyuubei.

“So it’s best when you tell me what you want,” Kyuubei goes on, still miraculously as grave and unembarrassed as though the topic of conversation is only the next week’s shopping list. “Because then I can do what you want. And then you get what you want, Tae-chan – which is what _I_ want.”

“You want—”

“Whatever you want,” Kyuubei tells her, seriously. “Everything – _anything_ you want, Tae-chan. That’s all.”

And there it is again: that prickling of new, uncertain tension, slithering down the line of Tae’s spine and leaving a trail of disconcertingly expectant warmth behind it. It’s hardly as though Kyuubei’s passionate commitment to Tae receiving every last one of her heart’s desires is news to her, and it’s hardly as though she’s unaware that Kyuubei has a tendency to treat her every word like it’s the inspirational gospel of an infallible god – she knows it, and she’s always known it, and the fact Tae knows it is precisely why, with Kyuubei, she always tries so hard to curb her usual urge to take command: it wouldn’t be fair. There’s nothing kind about giving orders to someone who’s fundamentally incapable of refusing them.

For Kyuubei’s sake, Tae’s in the habit of curbing her urge to take command... but perhaps, once in a while, she should try curbing the urge to curb that urge. Perhaps she _should_ allow herself to take command, once in a while. 

She suspects they might both quite like it.

“I... see,” Tae manages at last – but her voice is faded, her thoughts helplessly preoccupied. It doesn’t seem quite enough. With an effort she forces her voice back into her control; with an effort, she earnestly tries again: “I mean – I _do_ see, Kyuu-chan, I – I do. And I understand. In fact, I think – I might understand _exactly_ , Kyuu-chan.”

It occurs to her that her cheeks are hot, and as soon as she realises it she promptly flushes twice as hot – which is apparently the only trigger needed for Kyuubei’s own missing-presumed-dead sense of self-consciousness to realise that it should have kicked into action several minutes ago, for she acquires a look of sudden mortified alarm, and turns pink so instantaneously it’s like she’s making up for lost time. 

But... of all the conversations they could be having, of all the places they could be having it! – the mouldy abandoned hideout of criminals too incompetent to hold even just one girl and one samurai to ransom without the girl and samurai conspiring to let them do it... Neither of them deserves to feel embarrassed about something so absurd; both of them have far better uses for their time than wasting it on something so ridiculous. 

Tae pulls Kyuubei close again and kisses her. It’s the best reassurance she has; it’s all the reassurance Kyuubei needs. Embarrassment is, frankly, beneath them. It _is_ absurd, of course it is – but what isn’t? In a city as peculiar as Edo, this has probably been the most ordinary morning any of its citizens have had all week. 

When Kyuubei scrambles to her feet Tae follows her up, scooping the long blue ribbon of her abandoned sash from the floor on her way. She loops it once around Kyuubei’s waist and tugs her nearer, and from force of habit tells her _stand straight_ , though it’d be likelier to see the sun rising on the wrong side of the sky than it would to see Kyuubei ever standing anything _but_ dignifiedly straight; all the same, she holds obligingly still while Tae wraps and ties it for her, and doesn’t pick her coat up from the ground until Tae’s done.

“Let’s go and steal their van,” says Tae. She pulls the knot tight and tucks the ends carefully out of sight. “Shall we? Let’s get out of here, Kyuu-chan; let’s steal their van, and then let’s go and have a decent lunch. What do you think?”

Kyuubei stoops for her sword, and slides it into place. “I think that’s an excellent idea, Tae-chan.”

“Well, of course it's excellent,” says Tae, affecting modest humility—

“—it’s yours,” Kyuubei cuts in, at the same time as Tae says, “—it’s mine.” She whips around. “Kyuu-chan!”

Kyuubei laughs. It’s such a brief little hiccup of laughter that its escape seems like an accident, and it startles a laugh from Tae as well; she grabs her by the hand and pulls her to the door – which ought to open inwards, but which opens outwards when Tae’s kick meets it, and which will probably always open outwards from now on. 

The van is there, and the van is theirs. There’s no better way to end a kidnapping than with grand theft auto and a nice warm lunch.


End file.
